Vignettes of San Francisco eBook

There are not only contacts between the Latin and
the Oriental, but anything unusual may come to light
in that particular neighborhood. A buff cochin
rooster was wandering about the street the other day.
Stepping high and picking up choice tidbits and showing
off before his harem of hens who peeked at him from
their boxes, he strutted about exactly as though he
had been in his own Petaluma barnyard.

One day I saw an enormous negro running through the
streets with a piece of new, green felt bound around
his stomach. Now why should a huge negro run
through the street with a piece of new green felt around
his stomach? No one knows. And another time
a small Chinese maiden bumped into me because she
was so absorbed in that great American institution,
the funny sheet.

On one of those side streets, in there somewhere,
one of those streets untoured by tourists, I saw some
Chinese boys, dressed in American “Boss of the
Road” unionalls, playing baseball and calling
the call of Babe Ruth in sing-song Chinese. Then
near them was an empty lot and what do you suppose
it was filled with? Scotch thistles, and edged
with wild corn flowers. Even Nature enters into
the fun.

There is a story of an Italian who went through the
streets somewhere on Leavenworth, calling, “Nica
fresha flowers,” and from the opposite side
of the street a Chinaman with flowers would call, “Samee
over here.” All went well until the Chinaman
began to outsell the other, when the Italian remonstrated.
“Yella for yourself, see,” he said, to
which the Chinaman answered, “Go to hellee,”
and went on as before.

This story was told to me by very reliable eye witnesses.
The buff cochin rooster and the huge negro and all
the others I saw myself. And many other strange
things which I have not room to write, I saw in that
spot where Chinatown merges into the Latin quarter.

The Pepper and Salt Man

He was a man, I should say about sixty years old,
a most uninteresting age, and a homely, weather-beaten
fellow too, when you stopped to look at him.
His suit was pepper-and-salt, and he was just like
his suit. Good as gold, I have no doubt, a roomer
of whom his landlady could say: “He comes
and he goes and is never a speck of trouble.”

Still, he might have been as good as Saint Anthony
but no one would ever have noticed him except for
what happened. What happened wasn’t so much
either but it was enough to illumine that dun, common-place
man so that everyone in the side-seating trolley was
suddenly aware of his presence. What happened
was ten months old and was a girl.

A regular girl, one hundred per cent feminine.
One could tell just by the way she wore her clothes,
by her daintiness, by the tilt of her bonnet and by
the way smiled out from under it. I can’t
describe a baby girl any more than I describe a sunset
or moonlight or any of the wonders of God —
I can only say that she was everything that a baby
girl should have been.